ATI's New Radeon X850 and X800 Lines: A Smorgasbord of GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on December 1, 2004 9:41 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ATI Radeon X800 XL
This is probably the most interesting and oddly priced part we've taken a look at today. At a $350 MSRP, we need to compare it to $399 and $299 parts. Since it's a 16 pipeline part with 256MB of RAM and a 1GHz memory data rate, we can expect some very good numbers on this card, even at lower core clock speeds. The width of the architecture really helps when scaling down.
Performing as good or better than a part that's $50 more expensive in every test we run is quite an acheivement. Yes, the the X850 Pro has a 30% higher core clock speed, but the 30% increase in pixel pipelines from 12 to 16 negates that. Eventhough the X850 Pro has a little more memory bandwidth, the fact that the X800 XL is wider give is the advantage in parallelism. The X800 XL is just a better card than the X850 Pro, especially at the $349 price point ATI is shooting for.
Clearly the X800 XL is worth the added $100 investment over the vanilla X800 if it's in the budget. In every game we tested but UT2K4 the difference was larger than 24%, and could even mean playability under Doom 3 or Farcry under high stress conditions.
At a $350 price point, the X800 XL stacks up to be a very nice part. Unfortunately for ATI, it also elimiates their own current $400 incarnation of the X850 Pro as a viable entity. We find it very hard to believe that ATI would release a $350 card that would outperform a $400 card they just released a few weeks earlier so either, the clock speeds of the X800 XL and/or X850 Pro will dramatically change between now and when they are actually available, or the X800 XL and X850 Pro will be priced differently than what we've been told.
There's a quick evaluation of ATI's new lineup, but if you want to see all cards compared side by side, here you go...
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Booty - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Yeah, this product naming is getting out of control - I don't even want to take the time to try to get them straight. I'll wait until everything's actually available, then try to see what the best option in each price range is. Right now, though, I have to go lie down - trying to remember what product is which gave me a headache.bob661 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#16I would like to know too since we 6800GT's in a CAD environment and haven't had ANY problems with them.
BenSkywalker - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Any chance of seeing high res testing again?Alphafox78 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
#9, how is the 6800GT "slightly unreliable"?? Ive had one for months and have no "reliability issues."D0rkIRL - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I'm looking into that X800 now, as a possible budget upgrade, so I don't have to switch over to nVidia and get the 6600GT AGP.Entropy531 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
The X800 XL has some potential if it OCs well. The 6800GT is still the best option though, if you go PCI-E.shabby - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Worst refresh release ever! A minor bump in core/mem does not equal 50 bucks more.Im thinking that the agp x800 cards are not going to fall in price at all, these pcie only cards are not competing against them so it makes sense(for ati) to keep prices high for both the x800 and x850 cards.
Now lets hope nvidia comes out with a 500/1200 6900 ultra :)
istari101 - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
Considering the fact that both ATI and Nvidia are technological think tanks, you'd think they could do a less confusing job of naming their cards. :|flexy - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
pricing for the "high end" cards is utterly ridiculous...the (so called) high-end (X850) which is only a refresh of current tech is totally overprized, has dual slot cooling etc.....And...R520 is already taped out...
Who pays $520 for this stupid card which, not even has SM3.0 and is only marginally better than previous versions ? Retards ?
jkostans - Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - link
I miss the days of $200-$300 video cards being the top of the line (Voodoo2, TNT2, Geforce 1-4). I dunno why anyone would want to spend any more than this on a video card unless they've got money to burn.